I saw the word, “closed press” in Time magazine’s (August 15) article titled “Chris Christie lays out argument for 2016.”
“Christie spoke at length about his record in New Jersey, emphasizing
accomplishments like teacher benefit reform and bringing down the
Garden State’s budget deficit. Christie’s remarks were closed press,
but multiple guests provided quotes and recordings.”
And I saw “closed press” in the following instance:
“Obama Accepts Transparency Award in Closed Press Ceremony. March 30,
2011. President Obama finally and quietly accepted his “transparency” award from the open government community this week — in a closed,
undisclosed meeting at the White House on Monday.”
From the above sentence,’ I was able to easily surmise that “Closed Press” means a meeting / event shutting out press / reporters, and I checked Cambridge, Oxford, and Merriam-Webster online dictionary to make sure of it, and found that none of them carries “closed press” as a heading. I wonder why none of them carries the word.
On the other hand, Google Ngram shows emergence of “closed press” in 1870s. The currency peaked in 1940 at 0.00000016% level, and has tailored off to a low 0.00000004% level since 2000. But I can’t tell whether Ngram shows “closed press” as V+N, or a noun.
With that said, here are my questions:
- Is “closed press” a well-established English word?
- What is the alternative word to “closed press” e.g. unofficial remark or meeting?
- Though I don’t find any problem in the line, “Obama accepts Transparency Award in Closed Press Ceremony,” the statement, “Christie’s remarks were closed press” sounds somewhat foreign to me, because it appears to me as if saying [Christie’s remark = closed press]. Is it rhetorically and logically a perfect line?
Best Answer
NOAD, in its entry for the adjective closed, lists this definition (among others):
I often see closed used in this sense, where closed gets used in conjunction with another word, usually a noun. Thus, as you read the news, you might stumble across any of these terms:
In all of those, the word closed indicates that the public (or the media) were neither invited nor welcome to attend. It's essentially another way of saying private. It's worth noting that the phrase behind closed doors refers to who was barred from attending, and not so much whether or not the door to the meeting room was physically closed. In other words, it's metaphorical – although it's also quite likely that, in a closed-door meeting, the door in fact was closed.
The phrase closed press may not have made its way into any dictionaries yet, but closed-door has. I think most native readers wouldn't bat an eye at the closed press expression (especially in the context of a high profile politician who holds many press conferences), and they would immediately understand what it means.
As for “Christie’s remarks were closed press,” I might have been tempted to use a hyphen:
but I have no problem with a journalist writing it the way it was written.